>>22139>Where's a good place to start with Chinese metaphysics?To begin I would always recommend the daodejing. My own interest is with the yijing 易經, which is probably the richest in cosmological interpretations, but it's a very difficult text (not a book but a divnination manual). If I can suggest a book, Robin Wang's book Yinyang is imo a good introduction to a fundamental concept in chinese cosmology.
>I wonder what a full classical education was like in old China. What would have been the essential reads and essential stuff to learn?Confucianism was, for the most part of Chinese history, the official imperial doctrine, as such there was a Confucian csushi roll that is now known as the Four Books and Five Classics 四書五經, I don't remember all of them, but they include Confucius's 孔子 Analects 論語, the Book of Poetry 詩經， which is a compilation of 300 poems from all over what was then the middle kingdom, that is the yellow river and yangzi drain basins.
In the imperial examination exams, people had to make a "thesis" of sort, which could be, for example, some exegesis on the analects or the yijing, or write poetry in the style of the shijing.
